---
title: "Rotten apples," answered the ostler; "a whole sackful of them. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Rotten apples," answered the ostler; "a whole sackful of them. Who acts: Rotten apples. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What the Old Man Does Is Always Right, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/132/64/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, What the Old Man Does Is Always Right, sentence 64

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"Rotten apples," answered the ostler; "a whole sackful of them.

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**Who acts:** Rotten apples · **What happens:** answer · **To what, where:** ostler

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, What the Old Man Does Is Always Right. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Rotten apples), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg27200:132:64
# text = "Rotten apples," answered the ostler; "a whole sackful of them.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Rotten	rotten	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	apples	apple	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	ostler	ostler	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	whole	whole	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	sackful	sackful	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	parataxis	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | Rotten apples | the ostler |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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